Team-based competitive activities within the classroom setting may foster productive cooperation between students by unifying them to outperform other teams. The most academically effective group competitions give students the chance to succeed while limiting the possibility of repeat wins or losses. This competitive approach helps students learn from their successful classmates without reemphasizing their own loss. Group competitions also boost excitement and interest in tasks that may otherwise seem boring to students. They can make instructional materials engaging and enjoyable.
Teachers who use a team-based approach to competition can motivate disruptive students and improve their behavior. The Good Behavior Game is an example of a team-oriented intervention that can reduce disruptive behavior while encouraging on-task work. During the Good Behavior Game, an instructor urges students to pay attention and promises to reward the class if students cooperate jointly. Rewards such as leisure time or tangible prizes can be offered to groups with the fewest behavioral breaches.
Competition may negatively affect students who lose games, reducing their interest in academic tasks and performance. The situation worsens when individual students regularly lose in class-based competitions organized by the teacher. Students who come to expect failure may easily give up when tackling challenging academic tasks in the belief that poor performance is the likely outcome. They can develop a negative perception of school, seeing it as a place where they cannot succeed and do not belong. Individuals who lose in competitive activities may also become the subject of ridicule from classmates who can refuse to work with them, making them feel even more ostracized.
Students who constantly succeed in competitions may become preoccupied with outperforming classmates, which may affect their level of academic achievement. They may value outperforming others more than learning and can even develop a fear of losing competitions. In other words, their comparative, “performance-oriented” goals become more important than the individual, “mastery-oriented” goals. According to the Center on Education Policy, mastery-based goals should be preferred to performance-oriented ones because they increase content knowledge, understanding and skills.